Entertainment

How the Internet Saved Buddy Roemer's Presidential Campaign

Buddy Roemer, former Governor of Louisiana, is a relatively unknown candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination. He's so under the radar that in Iowa, only 31 people caucused for him - although to be fair, he wasn't campaigning there anyway.

How does Roemer expect people to notice and support him? The Roemer team is using a digital-first approach to politics.

"Online is the most important part of our campaign," Campaign Manager Carlos Sierra says.

The first move the campaign made was hire a social media firm to create its website. Roemer's team has been actively building an online team of supporters called "Free to Lead," which Sierra calls the campaign's "online army."

"We ask, they're on it," says Sierra.

The Governor's campaign is unlike that of any other Republican presidential hopefuls. As a staunch supporter of campaign finance reform, he's refusing donations from Super PACs and he has limited contributions to $100 per individual. A whopping 98% of Roemer's donations were made online.

Roemer's team has spent virtually all its advertising budget on digital ads, eschewing traditional media with the exception of radio (Roemer is using Fundly, an online donation tool, to raise money for more radio airtime).

The campaign instead has turned to social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to start spreading their message. The team recently bought a week of Facebook ads in New Hampshire, and they're waiting to see if that was the right choice. It brought in a Twitter manager to assist the Governor with his personal account, @BuddyRoemer. Roemer's official campaign Twitter account, @ElectRoemer, is managed by Zach Green of 140elect.

According to Green, Roemer has been doing brilliantly on Twitter, where the Governor has a unique and often hilarious presence. The Roemer team uses Twitter to interact with supporters and mobilize them to get Roemer hashtags trending on the service.

"The big story that has been missed is Governor Roemer spiked in all major Twitter numbers,"Green says.

"This isn't a random mistake. Govenor Roemer's campaign has been doing very innovative things on Twitter that no other campaign has thought of and the press has yet to cover, such as allowing volunteers to donate tweets every day. So far 121 people have donated their accounts, allowing his campaign to tweet through their accounts daily to 62,664 unique followers. Using hashtags, his supporters are strategically taking over streams such as #iacaucus."

Roemer's YouTube page has also been an especially important element of his digital efforts. According to Sierra, Roemer is great on camera and the team tries to capture him on film as much as possible. For Roemer, YouTube can provide an excellent forum to reach potential supporters while mainstream media outlets aren't giving him the light of day.

Roemer will be campaigning in New Hampshire in an effort to win the Jan.10 primary. The campaign's sights are set on the Republican nomination. But Sierra said they're not opposed to engaging the Americans Elect movement, a new political party which aims to nominate a presidential candidate via an open, Internet-based voting process.

Either way, Roemer's campaign will keep up their digital efforts. After all, says Sierra, the Internet "saved" the Roemer campaign: "It's the future of campaigns."

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